How to do Brand Design the Lean Way

I used to be an advertising guy by trade. I still am at heart. For nearly twenty years, I had the privilege of contributing to the creation of numerous new brands and helping existing ones revitalise themselves or become game-changers in their domain.

In 2014, I decided to make a bold move into the deep end of technology. I joined Futurice, Europe’s leading tech/design/business consulting firm.

I fell totally in love with Futurice’s renowned service design method Lean Service Creation, a canvas-based process that enables the replication of success in your service design work. Suddenly, I realized what I had been unconsciously longing for in the creative business – a structure!

One day I started experimenting with the idea of building a similar lean design process for branding and marketing. That's how the Brand Vision Sprint was born.

How does Brand Vision Sprint work?

A one-day co-creative BVS workshop with client (and end-users) is sufficient for collecting and defining all the essential brand elements for a brand strategy that then serves as a basis for developing actionable creative briefs, guiding the design team, service creation and marketing initiatives.

The method allows us create a new brand from scratch within one week. Alternatively, it ensures that an existing brand truly guides the service design work and that the brand is brought into life in implementation.

We now have two years of validation and dozens of successful projects behind us.

Does it work? –Oh yes, it does.

Is it fast? – Yes, it is.

Are we happy? –You bet.

Check out the canvases. Feel free to use them, and to suggest ideas for further development. Anyway, I hope you find them useful and inspiring. Please, don’t mind the obvious shortcomings in design – it is still an MVP. Fill out the form below to download the canvas set.

BTW, we are currently working on the next set of canvases (Experience Design Sprint) designed for a holistic implementation of the brand story and its fundaments defined through Brand Vision Sprint.